Abstract
Machado de Assis’s first short stories were published in the Jornal das Famílias (1863-1878) amid recipes and fashion and makeup tips. These writings seem to be aligned to the magazine’s editorial agenda, because they deal with issues considered to be soft. However, whereas these writings appear to have followed editorial constraints, another perspective reveals that the author attempted to question some of these topics. We believe that this is the reason he made references to fashion in these short stories. A study of the editorial design of this journal will be presented to demonstrate this hypothesis and will underpin an analysis of the short story "The Woman in Black" – published in that magazine between April and May, 1868.
Machado de Assis; short story; fashion; Jornal das Famílias